At their first rehearsal the Craftsbury Chamber Players work far into the evening. From left, Phillip Isaacson (partially obscured), Guillaume Combet, Dominic Derasse, Katherine Winterstein, and Liuh-Wen Ting discuss a passage as Mr. Derasse's children relax on the stage. Photos by Joseph Gresser
HARDWICK — A sultry Sunday has been drained to the last dregs of twilight. The light has dimmed but the heat remains and the side door of the Hardwick Town House is opened in hope of a breath of air.
The strains of a baroque trumpet concerto drift out into the evening. The Craftsbury Chamber Players are having their first rehearsal of the year.
Behind the town house a group of children are gazing upwards through a telescope. They are taking part in a summer astronomy program. The session ends and the kids drift off down the street.
Two girls, drawn by the music, pop into the town house and just as quickly pop out again.
“God, those are real people,” one exclaims.
Inside the hall the rehearsal, which has been going on for nearly three hours, goes on. The players move forward through the piece, stop for a bit of discussion, and start up again working their way through problem areas.
Mary Anthony Cox, a founding member of the group and its music director, sits in the middle of the hall, hands clasped behind her head, gazing intently at the stage.
She and the other players know the schedule. They have three days to prepare a full program of chamber music for performance. There is no time to waste.
A pair of youths have draped themselves listlessly across the apron of the stage.
The rehearsal is winding its way down to a discussion of the next day’s schedule. Dominic Derasse, a sturdily built man with a shaved head cradles his trumpet as he listens to the next day’s plans.
The two youths, his children, ready get ready to move on. They are wearing jerseys emblazoned with the name and number of Zinedin Zidane, the French soccer star.
It has been a difficult day for the French. Not only did their team lose the World Cup to Italy, but Mr. Zidane was sent off for head-butting an Italian player, a dismaying end to his career.
Both Mr. Derasse and violinist Guillame Combet are French and are feeling somewhat let down.
Mr. Derasse has other things on his mind right now. He blew a tire on his pickup on the drive from his New Jersey home to Vermont and needs to buy a replacement. Ms. Cox promises to show him a garage on the way back to Craftsbury.
The rehearsal has gone well. Well enough to permit an outsider to sit in on the remaining concert preparations.
The Craftsbury Chamber Players are marking their forty-first season this summer. During that time the group has learned a lot about successfully presenting concerts.
Central to the operation of the players is Ms. Cox and her trusty box of file cards. On them is a complete record of what pieces have been played over the years and notations of when they were performed. In addition there are cards representing possible future musical offerings.
“I’m a nineteenth-century girl,” she says, “ I don’t have a computer. I can go through my card file faster than you can put a plug in a wall.”
Musicians offer suggestions as to what pieces they would like to perform, Ms. Cox says, and sometimes they propose players, too.
“I like to have requests from players as to things would enjoy playing,” she says. “I like to have people happy with what they’re going to play.”
Ms. Cox checks the proposals against the card file. If the piece has been played within the past four years, the request will be rejected out of hand. Generally, Ms. Cox likes to wait seven years before repeating a work.
“We have a lot of regulars,” she says of her audience, “we want them to have variety.”
Once Ms. Cox has a list of players’ requests that can be honored she must shuffle through her deck to find other works to fill out the program.
Ms. Cox says she sometimes tries out program possibilities on her husband, Morris Rowell. A loyal member of the Craftsbury Chamber Players’ audience, he serves as a one man focus group.
Sometimes, Ms. Cox says, the group will get together at dinner to discuss plans and Mr. Rowell will offer his opinion saying. “You ought to listen to me, I buy tickets.”
Ms. Cox says that the group pays a great deal of attention to ticket buyers.
“We’re not an organization with deep pockets and large funding. We have to sell tickets.”
Once she has a list of good possibilities, Ms. Cox has to assemble them into programs.
“Putting together a program is similar to putting together a dinner,” she says, “now you’re not going to have three courses of potatoes.” The hostess image seems increasingly apt as the week goes on and the varied aspects of Ms. Cox’s duties reveal themselves.
Because the chamber players are not all available at the same time, Ms. Cox has to carefully coordinate musicians and the pieces to be performed. During the planning process she plasters the file cards with sticky notes bearing musicians’ names.
Once the season is sketched out Ms. Cox picks up the telephone.
“You call people you want to have,” she says, “and ask ‘what can you give me and when.’”
Many of the musicians have played with the group for years. Mary Lou Rylands, the cellist, was a founding member. Double-bass player Domenick Fiore, first performed with the Chamber Players in the late sixties.
Some of the younger players were recruited by Ms. Cox from the Julliard School, where she teaches during the winter. Mr. Combet and Liuh-Wen Ting, violinist and violist, respectively, were graduate teaching assistants in the ear training program.
Violinist Katherine Winterstein was brought to Ms. Cox’s attention by her fellow fiddler Mary Rowell.
Musicians need to be more than good players. They have to fit in to the Players’ family-style setting. Most are housed together in Ms. Cox’s seven-bedroom home and they share dinners, cooked by Mr. Rowell.
Ms. Cox needs to know who will be playing what by October so program notes can be researched and written and publicity can be arranged.
The first week of the Chamber Players’ season by tradition features music of the baroque period. This year the series is to kick off with a concert featuring a sonata for trumpet, strings and continuo by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, three pieces for two harpsichords by Francois Couperin, a concerto for violin, strings and continuo by Antonio Vivaldi, a concerto for trumpet, strings and continuo by Giuseppe Tartini and concerto for two harpsichords and strings by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Day Two — July 10
Monday afternoon is warm. The side door of the Town House is open again. Outside young bicyclists can be seen making an endless circle on the
From left, violinists Guillaume Combet and Katherine Winterstein, cellist Mary Lou Rylands, trumpeter Dominic Derasse, and violist Liuh-Wen Ting prepare to rehearse the Tartini Concerto in D Major for Trumpet, Strings and Continuo.
safe confines of the Town House’s asphalt drive.
Inside the players are rehearsing the Biber horn concerto. The soloist, Mr. Derasse, takes the lead role in the rehearsal process, but the atmosphere is quite democratic and all musicians seem comfortable making suggestions.
Ms. Cox has sent out music well in advance so the musicians have had plenty of time to learn their parts. They work, then, toward creating a unified interpretation of the pieces.
The harpsichord player, Phillip Isaacson, asks for a pause between two movements of the piece so he can couple the keyboards of his harpsichord.
Mr. Isaacson’s instrument has an upper and lower keyboard, each of which plays a separate set of strings. Each key causes a piece of wood with a quill attached to it to pluck a string, much as a guitarist would use a pick to produce a sound on her instrument.
Those of the upper keyboard pluck strings near the nut, a wooden ridge similar to a string instrument’s bridge. The lower keyboard plucks farther along the string. One set, Mr. Isaacson explains during a break, produces a more nasal sound, the other a singing tone.
One of the disadvantages of the harpsichord is that, because the distance the quill travels is set, the player cannot move the string more or less forcefully. Therefore, a performer cannot make a louder or softer sound by striking the keys harder or softer.
The harpsichord can be adjusted so all the notes played have more volume by coupling the two keyboards so two strings are played together. But doing so requires the player to stop playing for a moment to make the adjustment.
That moment is negotiated among the players and the rehearsal moves on. A player suggests that Mr. Isaacson can stop playing for a measure and asks if that will give him enough time to couple his keyboards.
The musicians try the suggestion out and it proves workable. They play the fast movement of the Biber so well that it worries the cellist, Ms. Rylands.
“Can we do that presto thing one more time,” she asks, “to make sure it wasn’t an accident? It felt so good.”
Ms. Rylands is another founding member of the Players and is married to Mr. Isaacson. Her role in the baroque concert is largely to help make up for the inadequacy of the lower end of the harpsichord’s range.
She and Mr. Fiore, the double-bass player, will spend most of the program “doubling” the harpsichord’s bass line, playing along in unison to give it a more robust sound.
Together the harpsichord, cello and double bass perform what is called the continuo part, a common technique that early composers used to provide a clear harmonic structure to their pieces.
While the instruments that can play one note at a time such as the trumpet or violin, are playing their parts, the harpsichord plays the piece’s chords underneath them. The continuous nature of the harpsichord part led to the name “continuo.”
After the musicians arrive at a satisfactory consensus on the Biber they decide to turn their attention to the Tartini. During the short break between pieces Mr. Derasse goes to the audience where a young black dog has been resting patiently. He brings him up onto the stage and places him under the second harpsichord where he sleeps during the remainder of the rehearsal.
The dog’s name is Socca, named for a flat bread made from chick pea flour that Mr. Derasse says is a specialty of his hometown, Nice, France.
Currently Mr. Derasse lives in a small New Jersey village from which he can travel to New York City where he performs and records music for film scores. A sticker on his pickup indicates that he is a member of his town’s volunteer fire department.
Mr. Derasse is playing a piccolo trumpet, a half-sized instrument that plays an octave higher than an ordinary trumpet. It produces a bright, piercing sound.
The instrument has another unusual feature. Rather than the familiar buttons mounted along the top of the horn, his has a set of three keys along the instrument’s side.
The horn, he explains later, is a rotary valve trumpet as opposed to the a piston valve instrument. The keys, he says allow him to play notes more rapidly.
Mr. Derasse and his colleagues work their way through the Tartini, but he is not entirely satisfied with the results.
“What I’m hearing is that you should start building the intensity to where I come in,” he says.
Ms. Rylands agrees, admitting “We’re a bit anemic.”
The players start up again and this time the sound builds so that when Mr. Derasse’s bright horn makes its entry the music crackles with energy.
Trumpeter Dominic Derasse explains to a youthful audience at the mini-concert that his piccolo trumpet is half the size and can play an octave higher than the type of trumpet with which they are likely to be familiar. Note the keys that distinguish a rotary valve horn from the typical piston valve models.
The middle movement of the Tartini is slower and Mr. Derasse sets the tempo by tapping his index finger against the side of his horn. It’s a subtle movement largely hidden from the audience. One of the players asks for a clearer downbeat and Mr. Derasse adds a slight swoop by the bell end of his horn.
The group runs through the piece’s third and concluding movement without seeing the need for a lot of work. Mr. Derasse leaves out the trumpet cadenzas, extended solo passages, and only plays the beginning of the cadenza and the phrases leading up to the other musician’s entrance at its conclusion.
Everyone seems pretty pleased with the results. Mr. Derasse tells the group, “My kids have heard me play this with a concert band, and an organ. They said, ‘This is the way it’s supposed to be.’ Actually it’s not supposed to be with a trumpet at all.”
Tartini, it seems, originally composed the concerto for a violin soloist. The valveless trumpets of his day, Mr. Derasse says, simply could not manage such complex and fast music.
His portion of the rehearsal over, Mr. Derasse gathers up Socca and prepares to leave. The other musicians relax for a moment.
Mr. Combet, who is playing the first violin part in the Tartini and Ms. Winterstein, also a violinist, try playing a chunk of the Tartini as if it were a country fiddle tune.
Ms. Winterstein has recently purchased a new bow from a French bow maker who relocated to Boston. She shows it off to Mr. Combet, who, it turns out, plays with a bow the same man made 25 years ago.
Mr. Combet draws the bow across the strings of his violin and his eyebrows rise. The new bow produces a much bigger sound from his violin. The violist, Liuh-Wen Ting tries it as well and is also impressed.
During a later break the two women explain the importance of the bow. “A bow for us,” says Ms. Winterstein, “ is like a singer’s breath.”
“It’s what does the phrasing,” says Ms. Ting.
Her bow maker, Ms. Winterstein explains, works with the musician to discover what combination of weight, balance and materials will serve a player’s individual style. In her case, she says, he built a bow that has more weight at the tip than her previous one.
There are other important aspects of bow design the women explain. The violin bow, is actually very much like a hunter’s bow. The curve of the wood, or it’s camber, imparts necessary tension. That must be properly balanced.
Mr. Fiore comes by and says a bow’s camber can be reset by heating and bending the wood. He himself, has done it a couple of times with his bow.
The subject turns to the horse hair with which the bow is strung. If the hairs are too long, they say, the bow cannot be properly tightened. If too short, it cannot be relaxed for storage. Poor quality hair is brittle and will quickly break.
Ms. Rylands provides a note of horror to the discussion, asking if anyone has heard of mites infesting a bow, eating its hairs. The prospect is not one that the others find appealing, nor is her proposed cure — mothballs in the instrument case.
During the Tartini rehearsal, a tall woman with a mass of curly blonde hair held in check by a backwards baseball cap pulls up in a pickup truck, climbs out and lugs a pair of lighting instruments to the balcony, where she proceeds to install them.
The job finished, the electrician, Mary Rowell, returns to her usual identity as a violinist and prepares to lead a rehearsal of the Vivaldi concerto called, l’Amoroso.
Ms. Rowell, a Craftsbury native, says she came to music through the Chamber Players, finding her way into the realm of classical music through the baroque concerts, which she found easiest to understand. Today she has a successful career in New York City, playing modern music with Ethel and the Tango Project as well as making music as a freelance artist.
Ms. Rowell asks the musicians to play with the rhythm in the first movement — “If you could make it seem almost like a waltz, as if it’s in three, but keep in four.”
The musicians also discuss dynamic variations trying to keep the many repetitions in the piece from falling into a predictable pattern of loud-soft-loud.
Ms. Cox enters the hall and stretches out on a row of seats for an impromptu nap as the Vivaldi rehearsal goes on.
Eventually the group is satisfied with their progress. Ms. Rowell packs up her violin and heads out the door. Mr. Isaacson taps a key on his harpsichord. No sound comes out, “I’m sorry about all the missing c sharps,” he says, “I have another broken quill.”
Mr. Isaacson, who built one of the two instruments used in the concert, says he’ll make the repair later.
In the meantime, the group prepares to tackle the Bach concerto for two harpsichord. Ms. Cox sits at one harpsichord, Mr. Isaacson at the other. The other musicians are arranged around the stage, some hidden from sight by the two keyboard instruments.
As they start playing, one of the young cyclists appears at the door, apparently drawn by the music. She leans into the hall, her arm draped around the door post as if to indicate that she is really still outside, and listens to the Bach concerto.
Day Three — July 11
The music sounds even more like music today. There are fewer stops for discussion and the problems that need to be talked over are smaller.
Ms. Cox admits that she is still not comfortable with the harpsichord.
The keys of the instrument, she says, are narrower than those of the piano. She holds out her hand, slightly cupped, palm down. “That’s an octave on the harpsichord,” she says. Separating her thumb and little finger slightly, she says, “That’s an octave on the piano.”
It is a quintessential craftsman’s gesture and one is sure that if the keyboard suddenly appeared beneath her hand, her fingers would align perfectly with an eight-note span.
An additional problem, she says, is that most of the keys of the harpsichord she plays are black, preventing her from easily discerning the cracks between them.
“It’s easier if I don’t look down,” she says.
Ms. Cox says she has stopped practicing the piano for the week, because she finds going back and forth between the two instruments too confusing.
Mr. Isaacson has no such problem, but he acknowledges that the two keyboards are very different. The harpsichord’s keys are shorter, he says, than the piano’s, as well as narrower, so the player’s fingers have to strike their very end.
In addition, the lack of dynamic variation requires the player to rely on articulation — playing individual notes shorter or longer — to transform notes into music.
One other aspect of being a harpsichord player that Mr. Isaacson does not mention is the heavy lifting involved.
After the afternoon’s rehearsal, Mr. Isaacson will have to pack up both harpsichords for the next day’s drive to Burlington, where the season’s first concert will be played at the University of Vermont’s recital hall.
After moving the harpsichords Mr. Isaacson has to tune them. And after the concert the process must be reversed.
The cyclists are outside again today. This afternoon two girls stop riding to slip into the hall. They curl into seats and listen to the last movement of the Bach. They seem comfortable and no one disturbs them.
Day Four — July 12
The Town House is deserted today, the Players have gone to Burlington.
Day Five — July 13
By 2 p.m. the Town House looks like a box of worms. Nothing is as squirmy as an auditorium full of young children. The first mini-concert of
Mary Anthony Cox performs a little dance for an audience of children as she illustrates how the theme of a Bach fugue travels among the instruments. Mr. Combet and Ms. Ting are also delighted by her performance.
the year is about to begin.
Ms. Cox comes out on stage and for the first and only time during the concert she shushes the 130 children long enough to welcome them to the concert.
Ms. Cox, who, at the Julliard School, is legendary for her toughness — Ms. Ting says some people jokingly call her class “fear training,” — uses the softness of her southern accent to create a welcoming atmosphere. She asks if there are any musicians backstage and in answer Mr. Derasse plays a bugle call.
He emerges resplendent in a Chinese silk shirt and asks the audience if they can see anything different about his trumpet. Some children immediately notice that it small, and he explains that the size allows him to play in a higher register.
Ms. Cox calls for other musicians and each plays a little snippet on their instruments before coming on stage. Everyone seems set, but where is Ms. Rylands? Mr. Fiore is there instead, taking her part on the double-bass.
Without a mention of her absence the Players launch into a movement from the Biber sonata.
The Players work their way through movements from each of the pieces on the program. Before each one of the musicians points out an interesting aspect of the music.
Some of the audience manage to sit quietly, but the majority wriggle constantly. The movement and noise don’t appear to bother the musicians.
The musicians get set to play the final movement of the last piece on the program. The fugue from the Bach concerto.
Ms. Cox explains that a fugue is something like a round. She stands by the harpsichord as each player, in turn, demonstrates how the fugue’s theme sounds on his or her instrument. During the music Ms. Cox performs a little dance swinging her arms in time to the theme. As the player concludes Ms. Cox claps her hands dramatically.
The players then play the movement through. They are enthusiastically applauded by their young audience which quickly disperses to engage in other summer activities.
After the mini-concert Mr. Isaacson mentions that Ms. Rylands is in the hospital. It seems that he got home the previous evening at 1:30 a.m. after dropping his harpsichords off at the Town House.
There he discovered that Ms. Rylands had been overcome by a stomach virus. He took her to the hospital where she was admitted and got home to bed at 4:30 p.m. Fortunately the Mr. Fiore shares parts with Ms. Rylands for many of the works on the program and could take over for her in the rest.
The day is hot and it is still warm at 8 p.m. when the concert is scheduled to start. All the Town House doors are open and fans circulate air up until the beginning of the concert. The lights dim and the musicians step out on stage.
Because of the heat the men in the group have decided not to wear their white dinner jackets. The women, however are fully decked out including — Ms. Rylands! — who appears on stage looking radiantly healthy.
The concert goes off smoothly, the audience is receptive and pleased at intermission, when they step outside for a breath of cooler air and some refreshments.
Something unusual happens at the start of the second movement. Instead of Mr. Derasse and company playing the Tartini, Ms. Cox and Mr. Isaac appear to play the Bach concerto. Without explanation a change has been made in the program.
The reason is clear the minute the Players launch into the Tartini. While the Bach is elegant and the concluding fugue is delightful, Mr. Derasse tears the roof off the sucker with his ringing trumpet.
The missing cadenzas show off his impressive technique and his trumpet’s bright, clear tone. At the last ringing note, the audience leaps as one to its feet, cheering.
Mr. Derasse smiles and gestures towards the other musicians. They join in the general applause. Ms. Rylands stamps her feet so hard that her music flies off her stand.
The work of the Craftsbury Chamber Players is perfectly captured in that moment. Musicians are playing together for their friends.
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